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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

III 



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WHY I HAVE NOT GONE TO THE SOUTH. 

[The following letter, in reply to an in<iuiry ar; above, was written 
by a gentleman of Warrington, England — a man of education and 
Ligh moral and Christian character — who passed the Summer and 
early Autumn of 1858 in travelling in the United States.] 

Boston, Sept. 16, 1858. 

Mr Dear Sir : I have be:n frequently asked, by the 
apologists and defenders of the slave system, in this coun- 
try — " Have you been to the South ? " " See the insti- 
tution as it exists, before you condemn it," «fcc. As the 
request seems a plausible one, 1 now wish to state my 
reasons why a journey to the South, to see the state of 
the slave population there, must be worse than useless, 
for ita proposed end ; and why, humanly speaking, it 
eould lead to nothing but mystification and deception. 
The slave-owner and his apologists seem to imagine, that 
the only conceivable evil of slavery consists in the lash of 
the overseer ; excessive and wasting labor ; privation of 
food, and the non-allowance of tim3 for occasional recrea- 
tion. 

Xow, I would most cheerfully — if only the issue of the 
question of the righteousness of elaveholding could be 
raised before some just tribunal, whose decision should be 
held binding in the case — give the slave-owner the benefit 
of admission — that no slave ever was lashed, or had his 
life shortened one minute, by labor and privation of any 
kind ; and that his life was one of continued jollity from 
the cradle to the grave ; and I tell him that the issue 



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would not be one whit the less doubtful. No man can 
be a slave-owner without believing or practising a lie ; 
and no man can be a slave without injury to his whole 
nature — intellectual, moral and spiritual — and these to- 
gether constitute the. damnable sin of slavery in the first 



Now, no man journeying through the South could, by 
so doing, see more clearly this lie which the slave-owner 
cherishes in his heart of hearts, and lives by as a divine 
truth ; nor would such journey reveal, more clearly, the 
moral degradation of the slave, than the fact that he is 
so brutified as to submit to a bondage which, if his soul 
were only a few degrees higher and purer than it is, would 
end in open rebellion ; war to the knife, and death to 
every slaveholder and every abettor of slavery where the 
bondage existed. These things are clear as the noon-day 
sun. And lashes more or less bloody, labor more or less 
wasting, and pork more or less liberally doled out, are 
matters of so comparatively small concern, that how it 
could ever enter into men's heads to place the issue of 
this great question upon such facts only, is to me utterly 
inexplicable. The only apparent reason is, that slave- 
holding has demented the master at the same time that it 
brutifies his victim. St. Paul describes the last state of 
reprobation of the Gentile world as one in which ** God 
had given them up to strong delusion that they should 
believe a lie, who had pleasure in unrighteousness." 

What truth can be clearer than that the man who 
accumulates his wealth by taking forcibly or fraudulently 
from others the daily produce of their labor, and only 
gives them, in return, such food and shelter as he gives to 
bis horses and cattle, and for the same motive, that they 



:5- 3 

^may work more efiBciently for his gain — I ask, what truth 
c ; can be clearer than that such a man is a thief and robber 
An the sight of God ? If he is not a thief, who is ? Bring 
the black hired slave into court : " I earned five dollars 
last week, and this white man took three, and only left 
me two to provide food and lodging and clothes for my- 
self." The American nation justifies this theft ; and it is 
their crime and their shame that they do so ; but their 
doing so cannot alter the everlasting principles of right 
and truth, or make the armed power which sustains the 
white thief in his crime other than one of brute force and 
oppression. Such national crime does all it can do to 
pervert and pollute the national conscience. The Ameri- 
can nation makes physical strength the arbiter and judge 
of all moral principle, and, by so doing, dethrones God, 
and becomes an agent of hell. 

But it is a comparatively small matter that the slave 
owner is a thief. If this was his only crime, he might 
still be a being of comparative purity and holiness. He 
is a murderer of the souls as well as the bodies of men. He 
declares the slave is not fit for freedom. And yet he 
bred him, kept him from infancy to manhood, but took 
special care that no faculty should be developed that did 
not serve his lust for gain ! Laws are passed, making it 
a crime to teach him to read. The intellect that God has 
given, and by the gift revealed the duty of cultivation, is 
stultified by enforced neglect. The spirit that was made 
for progress is enfeebled and chained down, and kept in 
the swaddling-bands of infancy ; and all that he can do to 
destroy the ever-living soul of his brother man he does, 
to gratify his lust for gain ! And I am to go into the 
South, to see the institution, before I condemn it ! And 



if I go, they will try to show me a man so brutified that 
be shall rejoice before me in his degradation ! And be- 
cause they have succeeded in making him a non-rebellious 
slave, I am to join them in exulting over the moral ruin ! 
And because they still have doubts of their own ability 
to keep the man in chains by their own power, I am to 
help them in adding mine to aid in such hellish work ! 
And the North does it — gives them the aid they need, 
and covers it up, all over, with the Bible ! And I am to 
go into the South specially to see whether I cannot be 
brought over to their side I I am not to go to teach the 
black man his rights and duties before God, but to become 
the auxiliary of the slave-owner ; for if I do not become 
that, I can do nothing. Except that, if I act as a Chris- 
tian, I have, as the certain result, legal imprisonment, or 
illegal lynch law. I will not go to the South. 

Yours very truly, W. Robson. 

Anerican Aiiti-Slavery Society, 138 Nassau street, New York, 



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